Film Review: Penn gives riveting performance in 'Milk'

Photo by Phil Bray

Sean Penn (center) and Diego Luna (center right) star are real-life gay rights icon Harvey Milk and his lover Jack Lira in "Milk."

"Politics is theater," says Sean Penn in his new film. It rarely makes for great movies, however. An exception is director Gus Van Sant's "Milk," an object lesson for filmmakers who need proof that features with heavy themes about events of historic significance can be personal and accessible, intimate and entertaining.

A convincing period piece about a "culture war" that has lost little of its firepower, the movie ends on a hopeful note that is now ironic, turning "Milk" into something of a cri de guerre for future activists. The film celebrates the 1978 defeat of California's Proposition 6, which would have mandated the firing of gay schoolteachers, but it arrives in theaters only weeks after the state's voters approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage.

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Photo by Phil Bray

Sean Penn (center) and Diego Luna (center right) star are real-life gay rights icon Harvey Milk and his lover Jack Lira in "Milk."

Penn -- who seems likely to win his second Best Actor Oscar for this performance, although Mickey Rourke remains a dark horse for "The Wrestler" -- stars as Harvey Milk, the San Francisco city supervisor who in 1977 became "the first openly gay man elected to major office in the U.S.," as a character helpfully tells viewers.

What makes Milk's life tragically cinematic, however, is its violent end: the Nov. 27, 1978, assassination of Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone by a disturbed political colleague and rival, Dan White (played in the film by Josh Brolin).

Van Sant begins the film with authentic news footage that includes an announcement of the killings by then-city supervisor Dianne Feinstein; this tells moviegoers unfamiliar with Milk how the story will end, which relieves Van Sant of the burden of constructing a "suspense" film, allowing him to concentrate on issues and to create close to a dozen distinctive characters, including Milk's longtime boyfriend, Scott (James Franco); an unstable Latin lover (Diego Luna); and a funny young party boy-turned-activist (Emile Hirsch) from Phoenix.

After a quick pick-up scene in New York in 1970, on the eve of Milk's 40th birthday, the film follows the bearded and scruffy Milk and Scott to San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, where their camera store becomes a hub for the nascent gay rights movement, which is galvanized by police brutality and the nationwide anti-homosexual initiatives led by orange juice pitchwoman-turned- religious-right organizer Anita Bryant.

Addressing himself to "my fellow degenerates," Milk begins a series of seemingly quixotic quests for public office. Emboldened by his growing support despite his defeats, he cuts his hair, shaves his beard and dons a three-piece suit, to become a more respectable and eventually successful candidate, with appeal beyond "the hippies and the queers" that form his base.

Working from what seems to be a pitch-perfect script by Dustin Lance Black, Van Sant presents Milk and White -- the political rival with the complementary name -- as good and bad reflecting images. At least some part of Milk longs to be "normal" (in the accusation of his lover, Scott); meanwhile, Irish-American ex-cop Dan White's yearning for Milk's approval seems to hide deeper feelings.

A quintessential "indie" filmmaker in the 1980s, when he made "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," Van Sant earned mainstream success and Oscar validation with "Good Will Hunting" in 1997. His four films since 2002 have been experimental and idiosyncratic; the last two -- "Last Days" and "Paranoid Park" -- never even made it to a Memphis theater.

With "Milk," Van Sant delivers a relevant civics lesson that is also an enjoyable biopic without sacrificing any of his identity as a filmmaker. The camera choices are often unconventional (sometimes, Milk and White appear low in the frame, with a world of space above them), and the narrative -- presented, in part, as Milk's in-case-of-death testimony into a tape recorder -- is fractured yet easy to follow. As an apparent answer to those who want to distinguish the gay rights battle from the race-based Civil Rights Movement of the past, Van Sant emphasizes Milk's use of peaceful protest marches, and has his hero comment on the need to emulate the approach of "the black community" in protecting its interests.

Penn is in almost every scene, and he's riveting -- the movie seems unthinkable without him. Penn's immersive mimicry combines Method commitment with Laurence Olivier-style disguise; his characters are partly defined by their hair and dress. The tension created when the actor's assertion of authenticity tugs against his embrace of performance is a key to Penn's fascination, as it apparently was to Milk's appeal. As Milk declares in the film: "Politics is theater... You make a statement. You say, 'I'm here.' "

"Milk" is playing exclusively at Malco's Studio on the Square.

-- John Beifuss, 529-2394

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